climate change and climbing

Where are some places to visit now, before they get too hot and/or submerged?

What climbing areas in the United States are likely to have long climbing seasons after we see a few degrees of warming?

https://www.outsideonline.com/2053031/how-climate-change-making-mountaineering-more-dangerous

Mountains are taller than oceans, we will be ok

Just climb whatever you want and don't worry about "climate change."

FrankPS wrote: Just climb whatever you want and don't worry about "climate change."

Frank no. 

Popular alpine routes from the 50s-70s that involve snow and ice may have their fundamental character changed, as well as their season.  The most apparent example I can think of is the Eiger.

In the extreme, warming may rule certain routes entirely out.  Climbs that were historically summer climbs may have better conditions in spring, but spring may present other barriers (e.g. greater avalanche hazard, exposure to cornices).

Some Old timers in the Pacific Northwest claim this is already the case with Liberty Ridge (though this seems to come up every time there’s an accident on the route).

There will likely be many new climbing opportunities when Lake Powell dries up/gets drained/dam gets blown up

Many climbs that rely on water being frozen to hold the rubble together will not be climbable, or will be much more dangerous. I believe some climbs in the alps are already closes down due to rock fall danger due to melting.

Learn to DWS FFS

Get out and enjoy today’s fauna.

You can worry all you want. We can toss competing theories around at each other.
It is all about a $$$$ scam, always from the get go. 

Bill Lawry wrote: Get out and enjoy today’s fauna.

... because it may not be here tomorrow. 

Guy Keesee wrote: https://www.telegram.com/news/20170122/mit-physicist-warns-against-alarmism-over-climate-change

You can worry all you want. We can toss competing theories around at each other.
It is all about a $$$$ scam, always from the get go. 

Lindzen is a crackpot, and the "$$ scam" is firmly on his end of the spectrum.

One out of every 100 MDs will tell you vaccines cause autism.  Do you really want to listen to that that person instead of the 99% of experts who say otherwise?

Lindzen, Pielke, Singer...the scientists who challenge climate change physics and models can be counted on one or maybe two hands.  Another favorite among the climate contrarian crowd is (well, was) Richard Muller from UC Berkeley.  After years of claiming sunspots were to blame for the warming climate, Muller famously performed a years-long study to prove his viewpoint...and ended up convincing himself that he was entirely wrong (he now calls himself a "converted skeptic").  Other contrarians, many of whom have been funded by a range of right-wing and corporate interests, seem to be much less interested in the truth.  Why regular people are willing to hitch their wagon to their stupidity is beyond me.

Oh, and "We can toss competing theories around at each other."?  Yeah.  "there are good people on both sides".  Have fun with that.

Good people everywhere I have found! Even the stupid ones.
Have a nice day.
Happy climbing!

Guy Keesee wrote: Good people everywhere I have found! Even the stupid ones.
Have a nice day.
Happy climbing!

I gave you a thumbs-up on that one :)

mbk wrote: Where are some places to visit now, before they get too hot and/or submerged?

What climbing areas in the United States are likely to have long climbing seasons after we see a few degrees of warming?

It sounds like opportunities for ice-climbing the Diamond Couloir on Mt. Kenya are becoming rarer. I think there was an article about it recently in a popular climbing magazine. I would suppose there are many other ice lines that are also becoming rarer with global warming, but it is also hard to find reliable datasets on such things. 

Guy Keesee wrote: https://www.telegram.com/news/20170122/mit-physicist-warns-against-alarmism-over-climate-change

You can worry all you want. We can toss competing theories around at each other.
It is all about a $$$$ scam, always from the get go. 

That is a nice short article about the topic. Lindzen is right about the alarmism, but he goes off too far in the other direction. Folks tend to exaggerate, no news there. About the "$$$$", I am mystified as to what that is supposed to mean. Folks have been studying the greenhouse effect from a purely scientific view for over a hundred years. No $$$$ in that endeavor at all. I got some money from two global-change fellowships years ago, but it was no more than the money anyone would get from any another research topic in the physical sciences: hardly enough to pay the bills. 

Jon Nelson wrote:

Lindzen is right about the alarmism

Based on what?  All the evidence points in exactly the other direction: the IPCC reports have been consistently underestimating the risks.

Climate change is the change of climates. Some areas will get hotter and some will get colder, some will get dryer and some will get wetter. New ice climbing routes will be found as well as new cliffs will be able to be climbed from "climate change". Truth is, the earth is old, very very old. We do not have enough collected data to say one way or another. The first weather satellite was launched in 1960 (50 years of data) or even ice cores (1.5 million years) which actually shows greater evidence against "(insert catchy political climate phrase here)". The earth is hundreds of millions years old, it's a living breathing planet that goes through cycles. Analogy, there are on average 158,400 frames in movie, its like analyzing 1 frame from a movie to determine the entire story.
If the earth was overheating and the oceans were rising, I don't think banks would be giving out 30+ year loans to beach front proprieties or companies investing millions into ski resorts.

Just enjoy life, respect earth and do what you can to reduce your impact. Climb on.

There was an interesting thread on that topic on TGR recently in the context of ski mountaineering (see here for thread and amazing pictures). One of the 50 classics ski descents of N America recently fell down. As in, the whole fucking hanging ice cap on top of Joffre came loose, taking a huge amount of rock along with it. There have been 2 or 3 subsequent collapses and by now Central Couloir is gone entirely and Joffre Couloir may not really go. Those were also mountaineering objectives btw, not just ski descents. A number of peaks in the Canadian Rockies are on the short list for losing significant mixed routes.

I can listen to reasons why we need to get off hydrocarbons.
But if those same people automatically exclude nuclear, especially MSR's, then I assume they are mere Useful Idiot's working towards Centralized Global economic control and they can just fuck the hell off.